Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Christmas Baking

I love mince pies & since I missed out last year I decided to make my own this year & they were yum. I based them on a recipe for orange mince pies from All Recipes.

The recipe is this, it did call for an egg wash before baking but I have left that out:

Ingredients

1 3/4 cups (255g) plain flour

1/4 cup icing sugar

2 teaspoons ground cinnamon

150g butter, softened

2 tablespoons grated orange rind

1/4 cup iced water

3/4 cup bottled fruit mince

icing sugar for dusting

Preparation method

Preheat oven to 200 degrees C.

Sift together the flour, sugar and cinnamon into a large bowl. Rub in the butter until mixture resembles fine bread crumbs. Stir in the orange rind. Stir in enough iced water to make a soft dough. Knead dough on a flour surface for 1 minute or until smooth.

Line patty pan holes using the larger pastry circles. Fill each pastry cup with about 1 tablespoon of fruit mince. Top with smaller pastry circles, pinching circles together to seal the edges.

Bake pies about 15 to 20 minutes or until golden. Cool slightly on wire racks. Dust with icing sugar just before serving.

Easy & delicious.

I also decided to make the cookies & cream truffles from Fat Feminist Foodie to go in with a friends christmas present. I dipped mine in Sweet William white chocolate which worked really well. These are crazy easy & delicious, I gave my friend a bag of about 10 & she ate them all straight away!